Fireflies in His eyes
by teddy25
Summary: Excerpts from Doctor Harleen F Quinzel's journal - They say that an awakened mind can sense your fears! And what if such a mind is trapped inside the body of the devil himself?
1. Chapter 1

_**The night before**_

 **Doctor Harleen Quinzel's journal**

 **Thursday, 15** **th** **September**

 _Aunt Alice,_

 _I know this is crazy, 'cause you are never going to read this. This is my private journal and I definitely intend to keep it that way._

 _But I have been staring at this blank page for way too long now._

 _It's almost midnight and it's driving me crazy and I didn't want to end up writing to a f*cking 'diary' which will most certainly not greet me back._

 _The moment I scribbled 'dear diary'', the whole idea seemed so incredibly stupid that I almost snapped it shut. Then my eyes fell on the red and black prayer shawl you sent me last Christmas. Suddenly I could taste the cookies you used to bring me and my mouth and eyes watered at the same time. :-)_

 _So I am gonna write to you each night,, without you even knowing about it._

 _The more I think about it, the funnier it seems._

 _It's like keeping a secret from you, which I could never do when I was a kid._

 _You always called my bluff early, be it on a poker game or in real life._

 _It was scary as hell...the way you used to read my thoughts!_

 _You must be wondering what made me keep a journal in the first place, since I suck so much in putting down my thoughts into words._

 _I was always the talker, not so much the thinker / composer type._

 _It so happened that I met a former patient of mine, who was a brilliant mathematician before the neurons started playing tricks with him._

 _I bumped into him a few days back in the park around the corner. He was accompanied by his sister who was pushing the wheelchair with an expression on her face that clearly told me she could've thought of a few better ways to spend her Sunday afternoon._

 _I walked up to him and said hello. His eyes resembled a spider's web when he finally managed to look at me . There was no sign of recognition in them._

 _His sister shrugged and made a face "Never mind, Rob doesn't even respond to mama now. The doctors said it will be like this."_

 _I wanted to tell her that I used to be one of his doctors, in the early days when the nerves didn't have such a vice grip on him; That he was barely the same boy with a lanky frame and strikingly green eyes who lightly flirted with me on our first appointment._

 _Trust me, Alice, I have been to places in human mind often enough to know that the boy was not gone forever. He was right there with us, buried beneath his ghostly current shape, sensing every emotions and weight of each word being spoken about him._

 _But he couldn't say his side of the story._

 _And it scared me._

 _What if it happens to me someday?_

 _What if I lose my mind one day and become a silent observer of my own life passing by, but can do nothing about it?_

 _I have roamed the dark alleyways of human psyche so often and I know how thin the line between sanity and madness is._

 _One little push and you could end up on the other side of the looking glass, don't you think Alice?_

 _I hope when I return to this journal and trace my secret and sole journey etched on ink and paper, I can remember why I started writing it in the first place._

 _I don't want to lose myself in the darkness I see every time I look into a victim's (people call them criminals, but I know they are the victims of their own mind) eyes._

 _I want to be the light in that darkness._

 _But experience taught me that darkness is powerful and demands to be feared._

 _I will never be able to tell it to anyone...anyone except you, that I am scared of the darkness._

 _My job scares me sometimes, Alice._

 _They say that an awakened mind can sense your fears!_

 _And what if such a mind is trapped inside the body of the devil himself?_

 _That's what the people of Gotham refer him as...the devil._

 _The man without any conscience, who does not abide by the moral codes, who has stripped his soul off humanity and made a deal with the Lord of the ungodly things couldn't have a more apt name, you'd think!_

 _Tomorrow I am going to meet him in Arkham Asylum. My first day of internship and Dr. Markus was kind enough to grant me something that's possibly every psychiatrist' s dream and other people's nightmare._

 _I get to meet the clown prince of crime tomorrow._

 _I won't deny the rush of excitement in my veins when I first heard about it from Dr. Markus._

 _"I know you can do it, Harleen. I am yet to see you give up on someone, even if he is goner in everyone else's eyes!" He patted my back when I was desperately trying to suppress the thrill bursting inside me._

 _But when it's finally happening, something about it won't let me sleep tonight._

 _I think I am a bundle of nerves and blabbering right now._

 _I should try and get some sleep._

 _I pray when I finally meet the man (or the devil-in-disguise, whatever it is), he can't smell the anxiety curling in my veins._

 _Love_

 _Harleen FQ_


	2. Chapter 2

**Doctor Harleen Quinzel's journal**

 **Friday, 16** **th** **September**

 _Alice,_

 _I am dropping the 'aunt' from your name, partly because you seem more like a friend now, with me writing you secret entries in my journal and mostly because I just had a weird nightmare and woke up sweating and panting and am hardly in a mood for proper greetings._

 _I think my bad day just turned into a crappier night._

 _You'd have said, "Let's start from the beginning."_

 _That's what I am going to do now._

 _Even though the clock shows 2 in the night, I know I wouldn't get any sleep tonight._

 _Maybe if I could get this twisted feeling off my chest, I'd feel better._

 _So here it goes. My first day in Arkham asylum._

 _Even the dull tapping of my soft heels on the stone floor made me wince; the place was so unnervingly silent._

 _I have never been to this floor before. Surely I've visited Arkham a few times before but we were only allowed access to the ground floor and first floor._

 _This was the fourth floor and the ambiance here already made it feel like the part of a different world._

 _The usual chattering, laughter or shouting from the world below didn't reach here._

 _The corridors appeared dark and dingy. The muted glow of the yellow lamps overhead intensified the darkness rather than illuminating it._

 _The occupants of all the rooms were eerily silent. The guards outside the rooms wore such a blank expression on their faces that they resembled wax statues rather than actual human beings._

 _The only sound I could hear was my muffled footsteps, followed by that of Dr. Sterano my supervisor. I tried to ignore the constant buzz in my ears and the pulsating vein in my temple._

 _We took a right turn at the end of a long corridor and a startled cry escaped my lips._

 _There was figure approaching us from the other end of the corridor._

 _After a moment of blind panic, I recognized him as Bill, a former patient of the asylum; a rather sweet boy with an unfortunate history of brain trauma who now worked as a semi-caregiver, lending a helping hand to the doctors and nurses._

 _I gave him a weak smile, feeling kinda guilty for being so jumpy and paranoid._

 _The day was not definitely going the way I planned it._

 _Bill didn't return the smile, which was unusual of him. Strangely, he looked as pale and nervous as probably I was. He was holding an old and battered toy, a teddy bear in his hands._

 _He stopped abruptly in his path while we were passing by and whispered urgently in my ears, making my heart jolt against my rib-cages yet again._

 _"Don't look the devil in his eyes. They suck you in!"_

 _His words made my blood curdle. Before I could open my mouth to say something, he secretly shoved something in my hand and breathed in my ear "A prayer for your soul, doc."_

 _When he hurried past us, I slowly opened my sweaty palms and almost dropped 'the thing' to the ground._

 _It was one of the eyes of the teddy bear!_

 _"Looks like the boy needs to get back to his daily medications." Dr. Sterano murmured as she almost snatched the weird object from my hand._

 _My heartbeat accelerated as I spotted the number 0801 marked in faded black letters on the furthest end of the corridor we were treading._

 _The number had been uttered in hushed tone far too many times around me to etch it on my memory permanently._

 _The solid iron door of the cell looked impenetrable and immovable, bearing the significance of its present occupant._

 _The letters painted on it had bled in a strange way to render the font a Gothic horror look, which made my stomach clench a little._

 **"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"**

 _Dante's inferno echoed in my head._

 _A couple of guards were hovering near the doors. They were well-muscled, dressed in all black ensembles and wore the same blank expression like the rest._

 _The only thing different about them was the weapons they carried. The guns looked straight out of some futuristic warfare movies and looked totally out of place in an asylum, even though it housed some of Gotham's most infamous sons and daughters who had lost their ways._

 _I wondered whether I should do the psychological evaluations of the guards one day, seeing how they spend most of the time being in a state of zero communication and high alert._

 _This place could do strange things to one._

 _It definitely had captivated my mind unlike anything else before._

 _One of the guards nodded to Dr. Sterano and took out a bunch of keys from his pocket._

 _I winced at the metallic screeching of the key twisting in the lock. It cut through the eerie silence like a chainsaw._

 _Dr. Sterano gave a gentle pat on my arm. "Are you sure you are not carrying anything that could be used as a weapon against you?" she asked me with a falsely casual tone even though her expression remained grim._

 _I looked at my closed-toe wedge heels, the full-sleeved white top and slightly over-sized beige skirt._

 _Yes, I was perfectly dressed for a therapist in an asylum; nothing too pointy, no garish colours or strong fragrance that could trigger a patient's mind._

 _I had deliberately chosen a mild cologne after shower. I wore my regular dark-rimmed glasses (not even the funky one with purple frame)._

 _I lifted my hands to show Dr. Sterano the thin bunch of loose papers I was carrying. I avoided stapling them or even using a plastic clip to hold them together._

 _"I have nothing else with me." I assured her._

 _I did have my mobile phone tucked in the side pocket of my skirt, but I figured she didn't need to know about it._

 _In any case, I will feel much safer knowing that it was with me._

 _"Nothing...except yourself, of course!" looked like Dr. Sterano had a habit of muttering under her breath all the time._

 _"Huh?" I raised my brows quizzically._

 _At that precise moment, the door opened with an exaggerated thud, making me jump a little and completely taking my mind away from our little chat._

 _As we stepped inside silently, I squinted my eyes to adjust them to the semi-darkness of the room._

 _The walls and floor were bare chunks of solid stones. It seemed nobody had ever bothered to put any paint on them to give the cell even a little semblance of a room. The only source of light was a few small ventilation holes on the wall, set well above any mortal man's reach._

 _A faint roar of thunder and a soft drizzling sound told me it might be raining outside._

 _That also explained the clouding, claustrophobic darkness inside the room and the freezing cold chilling me to the bone._

 _*How could someone survive five years in this hell-hole?* I almost managed to feel angry towards the asylum authority, but with the history of violence that followed this man, anyone could hardly blame the management._

 _"Ah, Good evening Helena. I see you have brought a guest for me." My breath hitched in my throat as I heard an unfamiliar voice speaking in the darkness._

 _My head jolted to the source of the voice and I spotted a dark shadow at the center of the room._

 _Honestly, Alice, that voice was so strange when I heard if for the first time that I am still getting goosebumps writing about it. It was deep, but raspy and cracked, like the man wasn't using his vocal cords regularly; there was also a cackle of amusement in the way he spoke, like he was enjoying some private joke._

 _"Switch on the goddamn light." Dr. Sterano was clearly not amused as she barked at one of the guards._

 _Moments later, a bright white flash of light flooded the room; making my eyes throb in pain and blinding my vision temporarily._

 _When I slowly opened them, another set of vividly colourful images struck my senses and made me blink in awe._

 _The man sitting in front of me was nothing like I imagined him to be. He wasn't wearing a clown's mask or didn't wear any face paints like I thought._

 _He was not a caricature or a demented cartoonish character._

 _Rather, he was a young man with the most striking, albeit strangest features I've ever seen._

 _I don't know what caught my attention first as I took in the vision unfolding in-front-of my eyes._

 _The bright strands of green hair slicked back on his forehead._

 _The unnaturally red lips splitting with a smile that revealed a set of metal teeth gleaming in the light._

 _The purple glove in one hand._

 _The pale skin acting like a canvas to numerous tattoos covering his body, some of which were visible through the thin white shirt._

 _My eyes caught the letter 'J' inked on his left cheekbone like a drop of tear._

 _I realized his emerald green orbs were fixated on my face and prayed that the blush creeping up my cheek wasn't too obvious in the shadows where I stood._

 _And I thought to myself "This man is fucking beautiful"._

 _I swear to God, Alice, this was the first thing that came to my mind and I knew in that moment that I should probably turn round and walk away before it was too late._

 _The only reason I stood there was to hear his voice again._

 _(to be continued)_

 _ **NOTE : Thanks a lot to the kind souls who have taken the time to read and follow the story. You guys made my day.**_

 **Disclaimer : The characters are property of DETECTIVE COMICS and DCMU. I own nothing.**


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